The internet/computer-media/infotainment age we are entering is the final triumph of industrialism. It may not, however, last long. At one and the same time we are entering a time of regionalism, renewed community ties, volunteerism, self-awakening, cultural and creative diversity.

The two trends are somehow running in parallel. The latter, I suppose, is the natural reaction and response to the former. The bigger grows the machine the more people will learn to escape its grasp. Even as it triumphs, human biology and culture will have learned to transcend it precisely because we are human, of nature, intextricable with the wild world.

I wrote this in my journal on Jan. 31, 2009. Now is when it was really about.

People will rail and rail against the seeming end of the easy times. They will demand of politicians a return to them. They will fail to see the enormous gift that is the end of high-flying easy-credit consumerist industrialism. But they’ll come around, if nothing else out of sheer necessity. That’s what this new time is about. Back to earth. Back to reality. The “working out” into a new pattern will take awhile. It will be tulmultuous. It will be challenging for practically everyone. I will also be enormously exhilarating and joyous for those who choose to experience it that way, to embrace it and enter into the spirit of the thing.